A message machine with the hiccups

What's behind the embarrassing "aberrations" in the Bush p.r.
department

By James Carney and John F. Dickerson

No one knows where they keep the Bush message machine, but when
it is working well, it hums more quietly than the White House
air conditioning. So precise is this instrument that it
carefully prunes the President's speeches, shaving away words
such as back and backward in order to maintain the image of a
man always moving ahead.

But last week horrible banging and clanking sounds could be heard
all around the White House: the message machine was throwing a
rod or perhaps three. First, presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer
blamed Bill Clinton for unintentionally spurring violence in the
Middle East, saying "in an attempt to shoot the moon and get
nothing, more violence resulted." That Fleischer, who normally
mouths the daily message with well-practiced ease, was the one
who caused the machine to seize up came as a surprise to top
Administration officials. Within an hour, National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House chief of staff Andrew Card
and counselor Karen Hughes had all gathered in the press
secretary's office to insist he make a formal retraction, which
he did. "Ari made a mistake," Hughes said later. "What he said
was not U.S. policy." As another top official told TIME: "Ari
usually sticks pretty close to message. This was an aberration."

In fact, Fleischer's outburst was just the latest in a series of
public relations "aberrations" to strike an Administration known
for boot-camp discipline. A lot of the new confusion seemed to
stem from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which
is destined to become better known for the controversy it
spawned than the report it issued. Two public-interest groups
and the General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress, are suing
the Administration for information about the doings of Cheney's
gang. But Cheney and Bush are clutching to each Post-it note,
insisting that Vice Presidents (and Presidents) should be
allowed to get unvarnished advice without the pesky public or
Congress knowing who is giving it. Defending that principle has
meant coping with a daily dose of unpleasant stories pointing
out that those given access to Cheney's office were the same
energy-company executives who crowd the candlelit tables at
high-dollar G.O.P. fund-raising dinners. Some members of the
President's staff have argued in favor of disclosure, but Bush
and Cheney will not budge. "Problem? You think there's a
problem?" Hughes laughed sarcastically when asked about the task
force. "I'm resigned to the perception problem."

If Cheney's intransigence creates a p.r. dilemma at home, his
boss caused one around the world with his State of the Union
speech describing Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of
evil." Though these may end up being the most memorable three
words of the Bush presidency, they were inserted into his speech
as an afterthought, a means of lifting Bush's rhetorical sights
beyond his true target: Saddam Hussein. It was meant to be, as
Hughes puts it, "a good quotable phrase," nothing more.

The phrase has revived Bush's reputation abroad as a swaggering
unilateralist, just at the very moment his message is supposed to
be coalition, coalition, coalition. The outcry from foreign
diplomats was followed by various White House explanations, none
of them particularly clarifying. Some aides insisted the phrase
was a conscious reference to the World War II Axis powers; others
argued it was not. The President was a straight talker, others
said, and was proud of the phrase. Yet while in Asia and since,
he didn't mention it once. Secretary of State Colin Powell,
though stoutly defending Bush's expression, also called it a
"bloody term."

In an environment where a single phrase can cause so much
consternation, it's no wonder the White House was both swift and
remorseless in burying the Pentagon's proposed Office of
Strategic Influence. When word leaked that the office's mission
would include the spreading of false information to foreign
journalists, the White House knew what it had to do. "It was
dead when it was born," sniffs one aide. Their pride wounded,
Defense officials complained privately that they never had a
chance to explain themselves. It's not as if the White House and
State Department have changed many hearts and minds in the Arab
world, they added, citing a new Gallup poll of nine Middle
Eastern countries that found deep and broad resentment of the U.S.

Message machines have their own ineluctable logic, even when
they're malfunctioning. As Hughes says, changing hearts and
minds in the Arab world will take years. But at home, the energy
task force is a bigger headache. "This isn't about p.r.," Hughes
and others keep saying. "It's about principle." Time to oil the
machine.